Trouble Puppet Theater Company

Local Non-Profit Redesign

Overview:

Trouble Puppet is a small non-profit theater group in Austin, Texas. Their mission as an organization is to inspire social change through the art of puppetry. Trouble Puppet hosts puppet shows based on many different literary works that ultimately focus on social justice and organized labor movements. Our team’s challenge was to redesign their original website, in order to improve the overall user’s experience.

1. User Research

User Observations of Original Website

We tested the Trouble Puppet original website on potential users. We asked questions regarding first impressions, their opinion on what they thought the organization does, and simple tasks - like how to purchase show tickets.

Quotes from user testing:

• “The pictures at the front didn’t tell me what this was for".”

• “Are the shows kid friendly?”

• “I have not seen anything like this, this is something I’d like to experience.”

• “I wish the mission statement would be more up front.”

Survey Data

After receiving permission to post on the Trouble Puppet official Facebook page, we gathered survey data from the Trouble Puppet Theater fans and members of the Facebook group.

Survey results:

What was most desirable about Trouble Puppet by surveyors:

1. The pure puppetry

2. The subject matter of the shows

3. The community

User Persona: Ophelia

Ophelia is a social, local artist supporter who is well-read, and wants to support social causes. Ophelia wants to buy Trouble Puppet tickets and dig deeper into their mission.

2. Ideation

Ophelia’s User Journey

After creating an empathy map, our user journey was created, with our user testing in mind, as if Ophelia was navigating through tasks on the website. She would want to find out more about trouble puppet, found the text to be quite wordy, as well as want to know the intentions of Trouble Puppet- is it art, entertainment, or activism?

Site Map: Improving the Homepage

Our team decided to keep the navigation simple and usable, similar to the original website’s global navigation. We wanted to focus on as many actions as possible on the homepage for the user, rather than the original site which only consisted on a carousel of images.

Style Guide

The style guide was inspired by the website’s production photos which portrayed the colors of the puppets and the theatrical scenery. We also included overlays in the final prototype in order to convey a theatrical feel.

3. Prototyping and User Testing

Creating the Prototypes

After each team member sketched a paper wireframes, we put our ideas together and iterated on our high fidelity prototypes. Some of the important features we wanted to include on the homepage based off of our research and ideation include:

1. A mission statement in the hero image in order to explain Trouble Puppet’s purpose

2. Quickly view and purchase tickets

 User Test Results

1. Changed mobile banners to darker color

2. Changed display images in photo gallery in order for the text to be visible

3. Added an “X” on the mobile search screen in order to easily exit the page

4. Changed the white copy on colored background so the copy doesn’t get lost & removed white borders on images

4. Retrospection

Final Thoughts

• We learned that it is important to get a stakeholder’s valuable insight into what their goals are out of the website. In this case, it was difficult to know exactly Trouble Puppet Theater Company’s goal until we received feedback from Connor, the Artistic Director of the company.

• White text on a colored background is not helpful for a great user experience. The text gets very lost and is difficult for the user to skim or read.

• It’s OK to keep the same type of navigation when redesigning, if the original navigation is the best fit for the site.